“Pinocchio” is not PC in today’s day and age

It’s widely hailed as a masterpiece. Some critics and artists call it Walt Disney’s best-ever animated film. But sitting at home, watching the 70th anniversary re-release of “Pinocchio” on BD, I was distracted by the thought that by today’s standards, the film would not earn a “G” rating. In fact, it might not even get a “PG” or “PG-13.”

Image courtesy of Disney.

The story is well-known, so I scarcely need to recount it here. But for those who have managed to avoid it: As the film opens, we are introduced to Jiminy Cricket, a pleasant little critter who is looking for a warm place to spend the night. He comes across Geppetto’s toy shop, where the woodcarver has just finished his latest toy, a marionette he christens Pinocchio. He wishes on a star that Pinocchio would become a real boy, and then he and his cat Figaro and goldfish Cleo retire for the night.

While he sleeps, the Blue Fairy arrives and grants Geppetto’s wish, sort of. She brings Pinocchio to life, but still as a puppet. To become a real boy, he must “prove himself to be brave, truthful and unselfish and able to tell right from wrong by listening to his conscience.” Pinocchio doesn’t know what a conscience is, and Jiminy jumps up to tell him. The Blue Fairy gives Jiminy the job of Pinocchio’s conscience, and disappears. Geppetto wakes up to find his puppet has come alive and is overjoyed.

The next morning, he sends Pinocchio off to school. But on the way, Pinocchio is waylaid by two conniving characters, Honest John and Gideon, who easily convince the gullible Pinocchio that he should forget school and become an actor. They deliver him into the hands of the gypsy Stromboli, who runs a marionette show. To the tune of “I’ve Got No Strings,” Pinocchio is a hit and the crowd showers him with coins. Stromboli has big plans to turn Pinocchio into the star of his attraction, and when Pinocchio wants to leave, locks him in a cage.

Jiminy attempts to free Pinocchio, but can’t pick the padlock. The Blue Fairy arrives again, and Pinocchio tells a few lies about how he got in the cage, causing his nose to grow. When he admits that he lied, his nose shrinks back to its normal size. Jiminy convinces the Blue Fairy to give them one more chance, so she sets them free.

Meanwhile, Honest John and Gideon have met up with the Coachman, who hires them to round up little boys for him to take to Pleasure Island. They intercept Pinocchio on his way home and deliver him to the Coachman. Jiminy sneaks along for the ride. On Pleasure Island, Pinocchio joins a crowd of boys who have a merry time smoking, drinking, gambling and tearing up the joint. He hooks up with Lampwick, who teaches him how to do all of those things. Jiminy tries to intervene, but is ridiculed by Lampwick and leaves in a huff.

While trying to find his way off the island, Jiminy discovers a terrible secret; all of the captured boys have turned into jackasses and are being rounded up and sold to the salt mines and circuses. He rushes back to warn Pinocchio, but the curse has already started turning him and Lampwick into donkeys. Pinocchio manages to escape with only a tail and a set of donkey ears, and he and Jiminy set off for home.

Meanwhile, a despondent Geppetto has gone searching for Pinocchio and been swallowed alive by the dreaded whale Monstro. The Blue Fairy sends a note to Jiminy and Pinocchio informing them of this, and they set off to find him. They hike underwater until they find Monstro, and Pinocchio gets swallowed by the whale. He sets the boat on fire to make Monstro sneeze them out. The enraged Monstro attempts to swallow them again, but instead washes them up on shore, all half-drowned. But Pinocchio is dead.

Geppetto, Figaro, Cleo and Jiminy are all mourning Pinocchio when the Blue Fairy’s light appears, telling him that he has proved his worth and turns him into a real boy. Everyone celebrates, and Jiminy receives a medal for his work as Pinocchio’s conscience.

The BD package is the second in Disney’s “Platinum” series, with “Sleeping Beauty” being the first. And while the picture is spectacular, don’t expect it to be widescreen like “Sleeping Beauty” was. Back then, films followed the 4:3 ratio that standard television does today. Widescreen films didn’t arrive until the late 1950s and 1960s, primarily as a gimmick to get people back into movie theaters and away from the television set. So there are black bars at the left and right of the screen. I’m sure you can manipulate your widescreen settings to fill the screen, but you’ll get a distorted picture. Don’t worry about it. You won’t notice them after a few minutes, anyway.

Disney also continues their new policy of including a conventional DVD in the package. It’s intended for those people who are planning to purchase a BD player in the future, but it is also convenient for those customers who need a conventional copy for the kids’ playroom or car DVD player.

The film features the Cine-Explore picture-in-picture commentary track by critic Leonard Maltin, Disney animator Eric Goldberg and Disney historian J.B. Kaufman, with images and interviews with other people involved in the film popping up all over the screen. Audio-only commentary is also included. There’s also a new hour-long documentary, “No Strings Attached: The Making of Pinocchio,” which covers a lot of the same ground.

Ten minutes of deleted scenes told using storyboards are included: “The Story of the Grandfather Tree,” “In the Belly of the Whale” and an alternate ending. There’s also a featurette on “The Sweatbox,” which was the non-air-conditioned room that Disney used as a screening room, putting his animators on the spot. Other extras include live action reference footage, art galleries, publicity, a deleted song (Honest John), and a featurette on making toys from woodcarving to today’s high technology interactive gizmos.

Most interesting fact: Mel Blanc, the “Man of a Thousand Voices,” who would go on to voice all of the great Warner Bros. cartoon characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc., only worked for Walt Disney once. He recorded the voice of Gideon, Honest John’s sidekick. However, the decision was made to make Gideon a mute character, so the only part of Blanc’s performance that remains is a hiccup. Too bad they couldn’t find the voice recordings of that performance; that would have been a really neat extra.

At the beginning of this review, I noted that “Pinocchio” wouldn’t get the “G” by today’s standards. The use of the term “jackass” might have been enough to give it a “PG” by today’s MPAA rules; but the smoking and drinking scenes would be enough to bump it to at least a “PG-13,” perhaps even an “R.” And what of the violent content when the boys are brutally packaged for sale, or the scary scenes when Monstro is chasing after our heroes?

Despite all the experts they interviewed in the documentary, I’m still not quite convinced that “Pinocchio” is the pinnacle of Walt Disney’s feature-length cartoons. That doesn’t make it any less impressive; it’s just that “Pinocchio” was only his second feature-length cartoon, after “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” There was a lot of impressive cartooning to come, such as “Fantasia,” “Lady and the Tramp,” “The Jungle Book,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Alice in Wonderland,” just to name a few.

In fact, I found a few inconsistencies, but the one that I really wondered about was how Pinocchio and Jiminy could search the bottom of the ocean without at least a hose to breathe from the surface. It would have been easy to brush that off with the phrase, “relax, it’s only a cartoon.” But Pinocchio drowns in shallow water after the rescue of Geppetto! Someone please explain that one to me. (Yes, I know that he needed to die in order to be resurrected by the Blue Fairy. But it’s still inconsistent.)

Bottom line: This is a great package deal, especially with the extra conventional DVD. But the violence may be too intense for younger children. It was for my three-year-old; she buried her head in my shoulder during the Monstro scenes.